


Tale as Old as Time

by counterheist



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bears, Gen, Genderbending, M/M, silliness, spain controls the weather, spain is not the sharpest crayon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-09
Updated: 2010-06-09
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:52:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counterheist/pseuds/counterheist
Summary: Beauty and the Beast parody. Down-on-his-luck farm boy Antonio stumbles onto a mysterious unkempt castle, and the enchanted ‘beast’ that dwells within.





	

Once, or twice, or during a set collection of infinitesimally small time periods, there happened to be a farm boy. There were many farm boys, in fact, spread out over the wide world. But in this particular village there was only one farm boy, because the main industries of the land were fishing and trade. The local farms had died off one by one due to the cheap importation of the villagers’ dietary staples, such as all manner of grains and vegetables. Somehow, the farm boy’s farm lived on, although it didn’t thrive.   
  
This farm boy’s name was Antonio.   
  
In addition to being a poor farm boy, Antonio was also an orphan, a hobbyist poet and an all-around nice guy. He possessed latent magical powers that would be amazing if he found out about and practiced them. As it was, he never quite realized why it only rained when he cried, or why it was so sickeningly sunny on his farm during the rest of the year, no matter what the weather was like in the village.   
  
So sickening, that all his crops tended to wither away just a few weeks after sprouting.   
  
Antonio’s father had told him to seek his fortune, long ago before he had mysteriously died. Antonio hadn’t understood what his father had meant, and so he had stayed on by his family’s dying legacy ( _The Happy Tomato Ranch!_ ). Odd jobs ( _which included fishing, scrivening, bear-wrangling and saying nice things to jilted nieces_ ) allowed Antonio to eat, and buy new seeds season after season. But his life felt so… _so…_ so empty. Like there was a hole in his heart.   
  
He checked, every night, just to make sure that there wasn’t. Because during one of his copying jobs, Antonio had come across the news of a man three towns over who _had_ had a hole in his heart. And quite a big one at that. Luckily a tinker had been in the area and had been able to work up a fairly good replacement. Antonio had been very relieved to hear it; living with a hole in your heart sounded like a scary, terrible business.   
  
Bear-wrangling was enough for Antonio, on that front.   
  
In fact, it was why he was in the deep dark of the forest that morning. It wasn’t quite the right season for the fish that lived in the brook outside his farm. And no one had needed anything written down lately. And, strangest of all, all the young women in town had recently found themselves in happy, healthy and stable relationships. Every single one. The only avenue left to Antonio for earning his daily bread had been bear-wrangling; so into the forest he had gone.   
  
He had made a lunch the previous night with a crust of bread, a sliver of cheese and the very last, tiny tomato his farm had to offer. At dawn’s first light, he had headed into the forest, and he hadn’t looked back. Looking back made it much more difficult to continue walking forward; seeing the trees and bushes close in behind him made Antonio wary of the forest. It usually made the other villagers scream.   
  
The bears that Antonio was paid to wrangle lived about a three hour trek away from his farm, and indeed, by mid-morning he was able to recognize the trees and various clearings he was walking through. Not because of any lingering forestry skill, no, the farm boy had no tracking abilities to speak of. It was just that the torn earth and broken rocks were very difficult to miss.   
  
He finally spotted the bears an hour after they first spotted him. There were three of them, sitting in front of a pond. The largest, a great beast of white, lumbered toward Antonio slowly. It stopped when it was just a stone’s throw away. Out of the corner of his eye, Antonio could see a line of rabbits and squirrels gathering on a nearby rock, to watch the two of them.   
  
The bear looked at him.   
  
It nodded.   
  
Antonio bowed in return, and threw his rucksack to the side.   
  
And the fight began.   
  
Seven hours later, Antonio was drenched in sweat, mud, and blood. His shirt was in tatters, practically gone, but that didn’t stop him from balling the remnants up and trying to use them to staunch the flow of blood from the bear’s wounds. “I told you this would happen if you used your claws.”   
  
The bear groaned. Antonio understood. “It _is_ fair! If you get to use your claws then I get to use my knife.”   
  
The bear groaned again. Antonio pretended not to understand, for its sake. It had groaned something terribly embarrassing.   
  
Antonio left when the bear’s mother came and made him go. She paid him by nosing three heavy gold coins towards his feet, and he tried not to think about where she had gotten them. At least these didn’t have blood on them this time. And payment was payment these days, when he could barely make enough money to live on. Play-fighting with a group of adolescent bears was incredibly dangerous, but Antonio needed the money ( _and the younger bear needed the practice; he hadn’t been able to beat Antonio yet, the poor thing_ ).   
  
Tired, Antonio started his journey back home. That wouldn’t have been anything outstanding, except halfway along, it started to rain. It was as though the sky was really a bowl of water and someone had cut a hole in the bottom. Antonio loved it, because it was warm, and because he didn’t see rain very often. But it caused a few problems for him. Namely, the rushing waters swelled the river that he was supposed to cross to the point that he couldn’t even get near it, for fear of being swept away.   
  
He didn’t feel like sleeping in the forest.   
  
Instead, he walked in the mud, a safe distance away from the bank of the river, and tried to find a place to cross it. He never did, because the forest began to conspire against him. “Mr. Tree! I know you weren’t over there a moment ago! Please let me back to the river.”   
  
If the tree could speak, it would have said something along the lines of “This is for your own good. And stop talking to trees.” Instead, it continued to nudge Antonio away from his chosen path, and on towards his destiny.   
  
Antonio’s destiny took the form of a tall, crumbling stone wall, intimidating iron gates, and a large, foreboding looking castle. But shelter was shelter, and it didn’t take much time before Antonio clambered over the wall and found himself on the grounds. The lawn was overgrown; so were what he assumed to be gardens. The trees hadn’t been pruned in ages, and the statues were beginning to lose their forms and edges from being exposed to the weather. All-in-all, the castle was a very creepy place, on the outside.   
  
Strangely, the enormous front doors, that still looked so strong, barely took any effort for Antonio to open. They creaked as they swung inward and let Antonio into the soft light of the castle.   
  
The soft light?   
  
Indeed, the castle wasn’t pitch-black, like Antonio had expected it to be. There were stubby little candles here and there, lining the walls and the floors, providing a soft glow of light. It was enough to see by, and enough to make Antonio feel warm again. “Hello!”   
  
Sadly, his shout didn’t echo. Neither was it answered. “Helloooooo! It’s raining outside, so I stopped by to get out of that!” He began to walk deeper into the castle. “Is that okay?” He spied a large staircase, and a tangle of hallways leading away from the massive entryway he stood in. There didn’t seem to be any candles set up on the higher levels of the castle. “Would you happen to have any extra clothes? Any shirts? Mine’s kind of gone… And the rest of me is pretty soggy too…”   
  
As he lamented his lost shirt ( _where would he find the money to replace it?_ ), Antonio spied a stronger sliver of light. It was coming from behind a slightly ajar door, near the darkest end of the grand foyer.   
  
He walked closer to it, and pushed the door open fully. “…hello?”   
  
The room was some sort of study. The only light inside, the light Antonio had seen, was given by a crackling fire at the far end. And even that was partially blocked by an enormous high-backed armchair that had been placed directly in front of it. Antonio, for the first time, began to feel uneasy. “Uh, if you don’t mind, whoever lives here, I’m sure you’re really nice, but I think I’m going to sit in front of your fire if that’s alright?” Silence was good enough as acceptance.   
  
Antonio walked over towards the fire and the armchair with some trepidation. He wondered who he would find sitting there… hopefully it wouldn’t be the master of the house, rotting and dead. Or some sort of grotesque monster. He had read about both, whilst scrivening. He’d also heard gossip from the young ladies of the village that plenty of lords liked to give travelers a scare by pretending to have a haunted, cursed, empty castle that could only be saved by a kiss of _true love_. Well. Maybe the village girls weren’t the most reputable of sources.   
  
Step by step, he closed in on the chair. It was red; deep red, and parts of the fabric covering it were fraying. But besides the obvious signs of age, it was a good chair. A sturdy chair.   
  
An empty chair.   
  
“Eh? I was talking to a chair this whole time?” Antonio laughed, and sat, no longer afraid. “Mr. Chair, how come you have a castle like this all to yourself?”   
  
“Holy shit, _really_? You think a _chair_ owns this place?”   
  
That had not come from the chair. Antonio jumped, just a little. He also looked wildly around, but he’d been staring at the wonderful fire for just a little too long; everything was bright spots on darkness. “Are you a bookshelf then?”   
  
A figure stepped away from the door to the room; Antonio must have passed him right as he had entered. He hadn’t even noticed. “I am Prince Lovino, _peon_. Kneel in respect.”   
  
Antonio’s parents had taught him politeness before they had died in that terrible accident, so he did as he was told, even though his pants stained the dusty carpeting even more than his boots had. It was a prince asking, after all. “Are you okay? Your voice sounds kind of strange, Your Highness.” He brought his head up, breaking his submissive posture to better think. “If you don’t mind me saying.”   
  
A decidedly un-princely “Shut up!” stabbed Antonio in the ears, as the mysterious figure of Prince Lovino stepped into the light cast by the fire. He stood, arms crossed, glaring. Except for one tiny little detail.   
  
Despite the fact that he was attired in breeches and a shirt that might have been high-quality and fashionable decades beforehand, Prince Lovino was definitely a _she_. Antonio could tell, because his visual scan of her had started at her face and had taken an indefinite pause somewhere around her crossed arms.   
  
“H-hey! Snap out of it. Don’t look at your prince like that!” In several short stomps the Princ… _ess_ traversed the room and put his- _her_ boot on Antonio’s forehead. “You’re trespassing anyway.”   
  
“Sorry Ma’am.”   
  
The prince **ss** let out an unladylike growl and pressed down with her boot, forcing Antonio to tumble backwards. The stray thoughts in his mind agreed that it might have been a good thing that Prince **ss** Lovino wasn’t wearing a dress. If she had been wearing a dress, Antonio would have been doing something incredibly disrespectful, what with the view he was getting ( _He could also appreciate that breeches were much more useful when you had to run around, although dresses looked a lot less constricting. His mother, bless her soul, had let him wear dresses when he was younger and it was hot on the farm. Some of the village boys had laughed at him, but after he had tossed the biggest one into the ocean, they had stopped_ ).   
  
“Never call me that again.”   
  
“Yes Ma—” Antonio stopped when the prince **ss** ‘s eyebrow twitched. “Yes, Your Highness.”   
  
“Better.” She looked at her boot, now covered in mud, in disgust and wiped it off on the carpet before going to sit on the large armchair. Antonio took a seat on the floor next to it, and felt out of place. Not least of all because he wasn’t wearing a shirt in the presence of royalty.   
  
He had a lot of questions for her, the most practical being about clothes and food and if he could stay for the night, but there was another thought that wormed its way out of his mouth before he could say anything else. “I thought we didn’t have a royal family anymore.”   
  
The prince **ss** flinched.   
  
Antonio continued to muse aloud. “Yeah, that’s right! The last family just… went away. Didn’t they, a hundred years ago? Mother taught me history, but that was so long ago.”   
  
“If by ‘went away’ you mean fled this castle like the fucking jerks they were, then yes. There are no other members of royalty in this area.” Prince **ss** Lovino frowned, and kicked a large ball of dust into the fire. It burned away in a flash of light.   
  
“I don’t get it… if the king and the queen and the princes and the other princesses…” Antonio decided to hurry along before he got anything thrown at him, the prince **ss** seemed the type. “If the others have been gone for a hundred years, then how are you here? Did your parents kick you out?” She was a pretty rude prince **ss** , but still, that was a little harsh.   
  
“ _No_ , dumbshit. I’ve been here all along.” She frowned again, and Antonio wondered if her face was just like that all the time. It was a shame. “Listen up. Now, because I’m going to need you to do something later.”   
  
“Yes, Your Highness!”   
  
“My name is Prince Lovino.” Antonio nodded, and smiled. She still thought she was a prince? It was kind of cute. “I’m cursed. Everybody left a hundred years ago, because I was cursed by some stupid traveling magician.” Antonio waited, captivated. This would probably be a really interesting tale. The sort he didn’t often get to hear in the village ( _unless he was talking to the girls_ ). “…and that’s it. Stop looking at me like that.”   
  
That was it? Surely that couldn’t be it. “So you were cursed to live forever? That doesn’t sound so bad.”   
  
The Prince **ss** stood in rage. “You fucking moron! I’m cursed to look like _this_!” She cupped her breasts with both hands and Antonio had to remind himself to listen. “To be a _woman_. Fuck, how many times do I have to tell you that I’m a prince for you to get it?”   
  
He blinked. And stared. “But you said that was a hundred years ago…”   
  
She huffed. “Fine, there are side-effects too.”   
  
“Like not aging?” He pulled his gaze to her face.   
  
“Among other things.” She grabbed a pile of sticks from beside the hearth, and threw them into the fire.   
  
“Other things like… can you do magic now?” Antonio had never met a proper magician before. Maybe this prince **ss** was a sorceress! Maybe she had gotten into a huge magical battle one hundred years before! Maybe she could magic him some luck…   
  
“If I could do magic, then I would have kicked that stuffy freak, and his fucking rain, and snow, and fucking fog back across the sea to where he belonged, instead of getting zapped into a fucking wench.” She spat into the fire. Antonio was a little impressed; she had a good pair of lungs, this prince **ss**.   
  
“That’s not a very nice thing to say about yourself.” Even if she was a hundred year old prince **ss** , she still wasn’t a wench. That was mean.   
  
She put a hand to her forehead. “Look. I’ll give you proper clothes.” He blushed, reminded of his almost-nakedness. “I’ll give you food ( _as long as you cook it yourself_ ), and I’ll let you have shelter here tonight. All you have to do is kiss me.”   
Antonio stared at her again, but this time at her face and this time in absolute confusion. “ _Why?_ ”   
  
She rolled her eyes, and spoke as though she were stating the obvious. “I’m _cursed_.”   
  
Curses, curses… okay. He knew about curses. He could put this in a frame of reference. Antonio was on top of this. “Oh! Oh! I know this one! Are you an ogre?”   
  
“ _NO_.” Her boot met his forehead again. “I have to get some guy to kiss me so I can go back to normal. The magician was very specific about that, the bastard.” ( _“…Y-you **hic** , you’re gonna be a fucking wench forever, you bad-mouthed little prick. You think… you think you’re so great?”_)   
  
Antonio frowned, easily pushed her boot aside and stood. “Are you telling the truth? You don’t need to lie if you’re desperate, Your Highness. Even if your castle could use some work, because it’s kind of falling apart, you’re really pretty!” And she was.   
  
Prince **ss** Lovino apparently didn’t think so. “I am **not** fucking pretty. I am _handsome_. Or, I will be, once I’m back to normal.” Antonio watched as she pouted and stared down at herself. “Goddammit, I like fondling them, not having them!”   
  
This was too strange. And Antonio had seen some strange things in his life. “But if I kiss you,” she perked up, “then wouldn’t you die? Eventually?” Antonio didn’t want to be killing anyone, no sir. If he had, he would have joined the army instead of scrabbling a living working a thousand odd jobs.   
  
The prince **ss** began walking towards a different door than the one Antonio had entered through. “Why the fuck would I want to live forever? In a world like this? _Please_ , one lifetime is enough.”   
  
That was a very depressing way of looking at things. Antonio preferred to think of every day he had as a blessing. “I guess…”   
  
“So?” Her voice turned soft and pleading, and her eyes implored him. “Will you help me?”   
  
Unfortunately, those tricks didn’t work on Antonio; they were _far_ too subtle for him to catch. “I like helping people!”   
  
She grinned a feral grin, which wasn’t ladylike in the slightest, and Antonio felt vaguely like she was looking at him as though he was a piece of meat. “Good. No take backs.” She started walking towards him, arms outstretched. “I was expecting a duke I could threaten into silence, but you’ll probably work even better, peasant, since I can just have you killed after all of this is done.”   
  
Antonio laughed, nervously. “Aw, you don’t mean that!”   
  
“Yes.” Her face held no humor, only anticipation. “Yes I do.”   
  
And in no time, there was a pretty girl ( _a prince **ss** even!_ ) in his arms, aiming to kiss him. Antonio panicked, jumping back as quickly as he could. The prince **ss** swore. Antonio gulped, safe across the room. “H-hey now, no need to rush things.”   
  
She stamped her foot against the ground and a cloud of dust stained the legs of her breeches. “Dammit! It’s not like this means anything, so why should it matter to you?!”   
  
Antonio didn’t know why it mattered to him; it just did. Kissing had to be romantic, and romance had to be important! The village girls were adamant about that. “It just does.”   
  
Prince **ss** Lovino threw her hands in the air and sighed. “Fine. Be like that. If _I_ had been in your position, _I_ wouldn’t have hesitated a second, because _I_ would have known not to keep a beautiful lady like myself waiting.” Wait… shit. Lovino had been in this body for too long ( _longer than he’d ever been a man, but who counted those sorts of things?_ ). He was beginning to think of himself as a… as a _girl_.   
  
“It’s the principle of the thing.”   
  
Prince **ss** Lovino began tramping away again, and this time Antonio followed. “You idiot. If you’re not going to make yourself useful in the way that I want, then at least make yourself useful in some ways that I need.”   
  
That sounded… “What?”   
  
“Make me dinner. I’m starving.”   
  
And so began Antonio’s stay at Prince **ss** ( _“It’s Prince, dammit! Stop saying the –ess part, I can hear it when you do it!”_ ) Lovino’s enchanted castle. He learned many things about it, and about her. First and foremost, he learned that Prince **ss** Lovino was incredibly rich. There were entire storerooms filled with beautiful paintings and large piles of gold in the castle. Silver too, he knew, because she made him dust them all.   
  
That was the second thing he learned; Her Highness was the laziest girl he had ever met. The laziest anyone. Hands down. The palace she lived in had six floors, with towers that went even higher… and Prince **ss** Lovino had lived in the same small collection of rooms for a hundred years all because she didn’t want to have to take care of the rest ( _Antonio had the inkling that she couldn’t manage to find her way around it either_ ).   
  
Over dinner, Antonio had struck up a compromise with the Prince **ss** , after a particularly large drop of water had fallen on her head from the leaky ceiling. He would fix up her castle, clean up the grounds, cook for her and keep her company ( _the last one was code for ‘kiss me now, fucker,’ but he hadn’t picked up on that_ ). And in return, she would pay him more generously than the bears ever had.   
  
It would be the perfect situation. Antonio liked working with his hands. Lovino hated it.   
  
Antonio liked repairing broken things.   
  
Lovino felt oddly content to project himself onto his decaying, crumbling castle, stuck alone in the wilderness. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone ever, ever, under the pain of death ever, no.   
  
Antonio could go outside the castle gates.   
  
Lovino, cursed, could not ( _Otherwise he would already be_ gone _, just like his traitorous ‘family’_ ).   
  
Antonio didn’t mind curses, and curses didn’t seem to mind him.   
  
Lovino, well…   
  
It was the perfect arrangement.   
  
Time blurred by, a wheel of color. Green from the garden, white from the fog that often rolled across the grounds, and deep dark red from the rooms Antonio lovingly cleaned and repaired.   
  
Soon it was winter.   
  
One morning, Lovino woke to snow outside his window. He planned to make Antonio shovel it all, because he hated having to do the chore himself. Most years he didn’t even bother, and spent the majority of the winter inside, only clearing the most necessary of paths. But now that he had a lackey… Antonio needed to pay for his keep. Lovino let him eat breakfast first, because he was a kind, benevolent prince ( _and because he had a hard time forcing Antonio to do anything before noon_ ).   
  
Antonio, for his part, was thrilled by the weather. It had only ever snowed once on his farm; just after his parents had died. And while that was a bad memory, the snow itself seemed so pure. So magical. He wondered if it was, indeed, magic that allowed it to snow at Prince **ss** Lovino’s castle. She was under a curse and all, wasn’t she? Maybe the fragile weather was part of the bargain ( _like the rain and the fog and the immortality and…_ ).   
  
He had tried to ask her, after breakfast, but she had only thrown a shovel at his head and pointed at the front walk before flouncing off to the library to get some reading done ( _for all she claimed that she wasn’t really a woman, Prince_ ** _ss_** _Lovino was very good at flouncing. Even without wearing any dresses!_ ). Antonio hadn’t minded, because he liked the physical work. It reminded him of his farm. His farm…   
  
How was his farm doing? Would it be alright on its own? The plants had all been dead before Antonio had left, so he didn’t worry about them. But the farm itself, the very buildings and land, were precious to him. Antonio hoped they were getting to experience this strange snowfall as well, just as a treat.   
  
After he shoveled the walk, Antonio made little trails through the garden he had cut back and gotten into some sense of order several weeks before. And then he abandoned work altogether and began to play, by himself, in the snow. Three snowmen down and starting on his fourth, he heard Prince **ss** Lovino’s voice shouting for him. He jogged over to where she stood at one of the castle’s little side doors, breath a little silver cloud in front of him. “Your Highness! You should come out and enjoy this; isn’t it beautiful?”   
  
She looked at him like he was crazy and drew her thick overcoat close around her shoulders. “It’s cold.”   
  
Antonio nodded. “And it’s fun!” He wondered what the rules for snow and royalty were. Could he throw snow at the prince **ss** or would that be considered too rude? “Come outside, you know you want to!”   
  
Lovino didn’t. He knew that he didn’t. But Antonio looked like he was having the time of his life, so Lovino stepped outside anyway, glad that he had insisted upon continuing to wear his men’s clothes, even after Antonio had found Lovino’s mother’s wardrobes on the third floor. Jeweled slippers would have been a bitch on the ice and snow; his boots suited him just fine, thank you. It was just as cold outside as he thought it would be, and Lovino contemplated going back inside to the warmth as soon as he was a few feet from the door.   
  
But Antonio would have none of that. “Your Highness, isn’t it great?”   
  
Lovino looked around. Where had Antonio gotten to…? He could hear his voice but he couldn’t see him… Lovino stepped forward.   
  
_Crunch_   
  
_Crunch_   
  
“Oof!”   
  
So that’s where Antonio was; lying in the snow. Whoops. Well, he was a resilient man, he would be fine. At least Lovino hadn’t been wearing the boots with the little spikes on the bottom. Either way, he hunched over to make sure Antonio was okay. It wouldn’t do to have the only person to come across Lovino’s castle in twenty years die from internal injuries. Especially not before he got a kiss out of the deal. “Are you alright, peasant?”   
  
Antonio stared at the prince **ss** from his position on the ground. “I flopped over to make a snow angel, but now all I see is you…” He trailed off. He had to. If he’d left his mouth open, he might have choked on all the snow Prince **ss** Lovino began to kick at his face.   
  
“Stupid!”   
  
But Antonio didn’t mind; he liked the cold. It was different, refreshing. While Prince **ss** Lovino tried her hardest to bury him in the snow, one handful at a time, he sat up. A devilish twinkle appeared in his eyes and she should have taken that as a clue to run, but she didn’t. It was all her fault, really, when Antonio jumped up and tackled her to the ground and she wasn’t prepared for it.   
  
“Shit! What the fuck was that for, you brain dead moron?!”  
  
“Now we’re both snow angels, Lovi!”   
  
Lovino stopped trying to drown Antonio in the snow bank they had landed in. “What was that?”   
  
Antonio stopped laughing. “Your Highness?”   
  
He hadn't noticed? Really? Lovino sighed and gave up. On that train of thought, at least. There were some things he would never give up on. “Now would be the perfect time to kiss me, if you were wondering.” He trailed a finger up Antonio’s stomach, his shirt wet from the snow.   
  
The laughter returned ( _Antonio was very ticklish_ ). “Your Highness, is that really all you ever think about?”   
  
The seductive finger turned into a furious fist. “Sh-shut up. I just came out here to tell you that it’s time for you to make me lunch.” Lovino hit him in the stomach and stood, disgruntled. “I’m going back inside.”   
  
After they both found a change of clothes and he finished cooking, Antonio and Lovino took their lunch in the smaller dining chamber, like they always did. Prince **ss** Lovino insisted that while the Grand Dining Chamber was much better and more appropriate for her station and all-around Grander, the smaller one was better for daily use because it was easier to heat and clean. For royalty, she was amazingly practical ( _only because of her imprisonment, but no one needed to find that out_ ).   
  
Antonio had spent half the meal away from the table, at the window, staring out at the snow. As Prince **ss** Lovino rounded off her second helping, he pressed his face to the glass, fogging it up with his excited breath. It didn’t take too long before he drew back and began to draw little smiles in the condensation with his finger. “Your Highness?Are there little songbirds we can frolic with in the snow? I like birds!”   
  
The prince **ss** snorted, extremely unladylike ( _She was always unladylike. Maybe that was why all the other men she told him about had ended up running away?_ ), from her place at the head of the table. “There haven’t been birds for years now.” She returned to her meal and her book; The Yonge Laydie’s Guide to Catchinge a Mann. It was dog-eared in several places. One of the corners was stained with a smudge that looked suspiciously like blood, but Antonio wasn’t asking about that.   
  
“That’s strange,” he turned away from the fading sketches of birds and fish he had drawn on the window next to the smiles, “why?”   
  
“I got hungry.”   
  
Antonio blanched. “Surely…surely you couldn’t have eaten _every_ bird in the forest. Not the happy little songbirds?” His voice ended up pleading, he knew that. But those songbirds were what kept his life from being completely lonesome on his farm, his home. So maybe he had gotten attached.   
  
“You forget that I’ve been here for a hundred years, you idiot. Eventually those dumb chickens _learned_ , although I wish they hadn’t. I’m not nearly as good at fishing.” Lovino realized what he had just admitted. Weakness. And every etiquette lesson he had had back when the castle had been at its prime and he had still been a _physical_ he had told Lovino that weaknesses were an incredible turn-off. “That’s not to say that I’m bad at something, because I’m not. I’m good at everything, dammit, I just don’t _care_ to fish.” There. It was a good save.   
  
Not really. Luckily for Lovino, Antonio was only bright when he chose to be. “What a coincidence! I really like to fish… I used to do it all the time back in the village…” He smeared a line through the remainder of his window drawings, visibly upset.   
  
So Antonio was homesick. Shit. Lovino didn’t need this, he really didn’t. “Look, it’s not like I’m forcing you to be here; just leave if you want to. And don’t come back.” Maybe he was getting too emotional. It wasn’t like him ( _Damn these female hormones_ ). “All you have to do is kiss me first and then you never have to come back here again.” Lovino wouldn’t care one way or the other. By then he’d be a man again and all alone in his crumbling home and… well. He’d be her—himself again. That was what was important.   
  
Antonio walked away from the window and took his seat next to Lovino at the table. “But I still don’t think that’s necessary, Your Highness. You really need to get your self-esteem up; you’re such a pretty lady, you don’t need someone else to prove it for you!” He took a biscuit from a plate between them. “Besides, you keep paying me for doing work around your castle; would you pay me to fish for you too? Because I haven’t been able to find many jobs around town, and… I really need the money.”   
  
Lovino looked down at his book and back up at Antonio’s face. “So you would do anything for money?”   
  
“Just about.”  
  
“Then ki—”   
  
Antonio dropped his biscuit. “Your _Highness_ , my mother raised me better than that.”   
  
“Fine. I don’t care. The stupid curse probably wants the guy to fall in love with me or something like that first anyway.” That was the reason he had taken to reading the stupid ‘Yonge Laydies’ books. It had gotten him closer with the others. Not close enough, obviously, but closer.“Paying you off wouldn’t work.”   
  
Biscuit recovered, Antonio devoured it in three large bites. “Hrnff?”   
  
Lovino scowled at the crumbs on his plate. He hated it when the idiots couldn’t figure it out on their own. Almost as much as he hated it when they refused to fall in love with him and kiss him after he explained! “All I’ve had to do around here for the past hundred years was eat, sleep and read, stupid. And half the library is my little brother’s ‘novel’ collection… not that I would ever read those trash rags. I just. I just saw the covers of a few of them ( _Read the entire collection, cover to cover, at least six times_ ). It's what's expected.”   
  
“Oh.” Antonio swallowed. Ah, it had been far too long since he’d had a good biscuit. “That’s too bad. Love is very hard to come by.”   
  
What was he implying? That no one would ever love…? “Are you _mocking_ me?!”   
  
“No!” Antonio threw his hands up to shield himself from any assault. Prince **ss** Lovino’s first reaction to things that angered her ( _most everything_ ) was to shout. Her second impulse was to throw things. Sharp things. “I’m just saying that it is. You know, there are a lot of ladies in the village that have terrible luck in love. But they’ve been doing a lot better lately. If you want I can go back and fetch one of them to give you advice…?”   
  
“You don’t even get it; urgh, why am I surrounded by morons?” Never mind that Lovino hadn’t been surrounded by anything except for empty stone walls and the occasional knight/messenger/huntsman since he had been cursed.   
  
“Name-calling isn’t nice, Your Highness.”   
  
There he went again. As much as Lovino liked it that this one knew his place, he really wished Antonio would purposefully call him Lovino for once, or even 'Lovi' like he had out in the snow; the book said that was one of the first steps to a deeper relationship and fuck it all if he wasn’t tired of being a woman. “Stop calling me that already. It’s been seven months.”  
  
“Then what should I—seven months?” He blinked at her.   
  
“Yes. How long did you think it’d been?”   
  
“…seven days maybe? The time went by so quickly…” Prince **ss** Lovino was nice and all, sort of, and Antonio liked that he’d been getting a stable income lately, but… “I should really be going, Your Highness. I’m sorry, I just… my whole life’s back at my farm.”   
  
Prince **ss** Lovino didn’t say anything, for a while. She just stared at Antonio, eyes half shut. Not quite glaring. Scrutinizing. It made him nervous. “Fine. Of course. Just go.”   
  
That… wasn’t what he had expected to hear. “Your Highness?”   
  
She waved her left hand at the table. “I’m done. Clean these dishes and then you’re free to leave.” The prince **ss** stood, swiping her book from the table. Not bothering to look at Antonio she continued to give him instructions. “The last room on the right of the first floor hallway is one of the best treasure rooms. Take as much as you can carry. Those are your wages.”   
  
That wasn’t what he had expected to hear but it was wonderful all the same! “Th-thank you Your Highness! I hope you have a nice day!”   
  
She didn’t stop walking. She just pushed the door to the grand staircase open and spoke with her back to him as she left. “Sure.”   
  
And that was the last that Antonio saw of her for a very long time. That very day he packed the bag he had brought to the castle, the daypack he had taken on his bear-wrangling expedition, months before. He also packed several bags full of old gold coins, because those were the treasure that filled the room that Lovino had directed him to. Antonio had whistled as he’d done his last chore, had skipped as he’d packed his money away ( _It was enough for a whole season of new plants on the farm, surely with even more to spare!_ ) and had looked back and fondly patted the gates as he’d left.  
  
Lovino watched him from his window, so he knew.   
  
Back in town, Antonio was assaulted left and right by familiar faces. They wondered at his healthy appearance, because surely, had he not gotten lost in the woods? Had he not perished ( _But I’m right here! Of course I’m not dead, that’s silly_ )? And when he showed them the gold he had earned, they marveled.   
  
But when he told them where he had found it, they shrank back and warned him. Cursed castles were dangerous places, no matter how harmless the curse seemed to be. Entire families had fled from the cursed before, that was no strange thing. The townspeople told Antonio not to go back. As he walked off on the dirt path to his home, Antonio was struck with a thought: it hadn't even occurred to him to return. His only thoughts had been on going home and the plants he would buy ( _tomatoes again, of course!_ ).   
  
But.   
  
He just had to wonder, as he cleared the dust off his bed linens. Was Lovino lonely there, all alone? Certainly she’d been in that castle by herself for a very long time, Antonio believed her when she said she was old. Even if he didn’t really believe her when she said she was actually a man; she was just so… so womanly! He had checked, visually, many times. Very covertly. She was _definitely_ a ‘she’ ( _Oh yes…_ ).   
  
Antonio slipped under the covers of his bed and prepared to sleep. Lovino had always seemed very independent. She was probably doing just fine. By herself. He drifted off to sleep with the mixed images of gold and tomatoes and a lonely Prince **ss** floating behind his eyelids.   
  
And so the days went by, one after another. The light dusting of snow that had also covered Antonio’s farm disappeared quickly with the return of the cheerful, blazing sun. The seeds that Antonio bought with his gold began to sprout. In fact, they grew much more than Antonio’s plants usually did. Usually the sprouts withered away and died after a few weeks, with only the most resilient sticking around long enough to bear fruit. But this crop… Antonio hadn’t noticed _any_ plants die off from this crop. He had even had to thin out some of the tomatoes!   
  
It must have been because of the rain.   
  
Yes, the rain. It was the strangest thing; a few weeks after Antonio had returned from Lovino’s castle, an offhand light drizzle had turned into such a deluge that Antonio had thought his farm would be washed away into the sea. Luckily it hadn’t. After that torrential storm, things calmed down. Although every few days or so, the sky would open and pour down straight over his farm, no matter what the weather was like in town. It was wonderful for the tomatoes, and it always seemed to match the times when Antonio felt those curious little melancholic twinges in his heart. But it was all very strange.   
  
One evening, after it had been raining all day, Antonio decided to go to bed early. He couldn’t do any more work outside. The drizzle and mist were so thick that he could barely see his hand in front of his face in the fields. And frankly he didn’t feel like doing any work inside. So he had replaced his work clothes with his nightshirt, had banked the fire in the fireplace, and had settled down in his bed. Before he went to sleep, he remembered to do two things. First, he hoped that his parents were happy, wherever they were. Second, he checked to make sure that there wasn’t a hole in his heart. The same two things he always did before he went to sleep.   
  
When Antonio brought his hand up to his chest, he might have felt a little ache, but that might have also been his imagination. What definitely wasn’t his imagination was the echoing _THUMP_ he heard when he hit his hand against the spot where his heart was. _What the hell?_ Antonio’s worst fear crashed down on him at about the same time it started hailing outside.   
  
His heart was hollow.   
  
This wasn’t good.

The next day, the rain hadn’t lifted and Antonio entertained the thought that he might be a little depressed. Depressed and with a hollow heart... why was this happening to him? He couldn’t live like this, he had to do something!   
  
It was then that Antonio remembered the story of the man and the tinker.   
  
The man from three towns over had had a hole in his heart; that was even worse than having a hollow one, surely ( _except a hollow heart was just like a heart with a great big hole hidden in the middle and… Antonio was trying to look on the bright side. It was difficult_ )! And a travelling tinker had been able to patch him up in no time. Surely he would be able to fix Antonio too. Maybe then Antonio would start feeling better. 

He would have to find this tinker.   
  
But Antonio had no idea where to look for him. The next best thing was finding the man the tinker had saved, and as that was something Antonio was capable of, it was the very first thing he set out to do the next morning.   
  
The people of the town three towns over were very nice; if not quite as nice as the people in Antonio’s hometown ( _he might have been a bit biased_ ). When he asked them questions about the man and the tinker, they gave him far more direct answers than his old copying job had. For example, they told him that both the man who had formerly had a hole in his heart and the tinker were still living on the outskirts of the town. They also told him that both were actually tinkers now, and that both were actually rather crazy.   
  
Antonio didn’t think that was a nice thing to say, so he walked off to the tinkers’ home to make his own judgments. When he arrived, he found a calm clearing with a pleasant little cottage in the center. Smoke rose out of several chimneys ( _why did they need so many?_ ) and a man stood out on the path, sweeping away a trail of dirt and leaves.   
  
Finally Antonio would be getting some answers. “Excuse me, would you happen to be Ivan the tinker?”   
  
The giant of a man turned towards him, revealing a yellow broom in one hand and a bland, pleasant smiled stretched across his face. “Yes. No. I am being Ivan, the only Ivan for miles. But I am not being the tinker, I am merely helping him because he is very bad salesperson, yes?”   
  
Antonio wasn’t sure if that was supposed to mean that Ivan was a better one. He didn’t seem like it, and although he had a strange accent, he was being very nice and cheerful. And yet the result was somehow off-putting to Antonio. But he was probably just being silly again. “But you _were_ the man who had a hole in his heart, right? I heard about it. My name is Antonio. I live three towns over, in the village not too far from the large seaport. You know, we haven’t been getting that much rain this year, so a lot of people from our town have been relying on the port more than ever. But I think the sun is nice, and at least we have our own seaside too, y'know? And… oh where was I?”   
  
“You were speaking of the sun, yes? Antonio-from-three-towns-over.” Ivan leaned his head and hands on top of his broom, content to listen, smile becoming more genuine by the second.   
  
It was easy for Antonio to talk about his home; he loved it very much. “We get sun all the time in the village! Well, maybe not all the time. Actually, it seems to just be my farm that gets all the sunshine. It’s almost every day, and I love it because it’s nice and warm.” Ivan nodded along. “It’s not very good for my plants though, too much sun.”   
  
“I am finding that hard to be believing.”   
  
“But it’s true!” Antonio pointed to the sky. “Just the sun can be bad for plants, ‘specially when it doesn’t rain for a very long time, although lately it’s been raining a lot more frequently, which has been better, but oh! That’s right! I thought it was funny because it was raining when I was sad, and I’ve been sad because my heart has a hole in it, on the inside, just like yours did!” He tapped his hand against it, to let Ivan hear the hollow sound. “That’s why I came here to talk to you.”   
  
Ivan marveled at the noise. He even brought his own hand against Antonio’s chest and gave it a good sharp knock. Antonio was proud that he didn’t _quite_ fall over. Ivan was only confused by the echo. “It was metaphor, yes? You are understanding?”   
  
Antonio clutched his slightly bruised chest. “What?”   
  
“I was not having real hole in my heart, Antonio-from-three-towns-over.” He pointed at his own heart, to make sure Antonio was following him. “I was merely lonely, yes?”   
  
It had just been a metaphor? No one else had had Antonio’s problem before? He was alone in this scary, terrible business? “Oh… then what’s wrong with me?” He hoped he wasn’t going to die from it. That would be sad. Who would look after his farm then?   
  
“You, I am thinking, are actually cursed.” Ivan nodded. “It is unfortunate.”   
  
Unfortunate would be one way to put it. “I guess… thanks anyway.”   
  
Ivan set his broom down and clapped a hand around Antonio’s shoulders. “It is not being problem, yes. Yes, would you care to stay for small little while, Antonio-from-three-towns-over? We are having special sale at moment. Alfred can be making you some tin heart if that is what you are really wanting.”   
  
Antonio didn’t want to think of what the procedure of replacing his hollow heart with one made of tin would entail. “I’m fine, thanks. I should probably be going.”   
  
Ivan’s smile was firm. “I insist, yes?” Maybe he _was_ a good salesperson.   
  
“Uh… no.”   
  
As Antonio began to back away, a man vaulted out of the house. He smelled like wood smoke and grease, and he was wearing thick blacksmithing gloves, goggles and a tattered blue satin cape. “Hey! Ivan!” The man, who must have been the real tinker, stopped a few feet short of Ivan and Antonio. “No creeping out the customers, what have I told you a thousand times?”   
  
Ivan smirked when the tinker jabbed a finger at his nose. “I am believing the only things you are telling me that many times are ‘God, more!’ and ‘I am hungry, Ivan.’”   
  
The tinker waved a gloved hand in Antonio’s direction and used his other to drag Ivan back inside. “Look, you can go. Small marital spat here, nothing to see.” A small puff of dust flew from the door as he slammed it shut behind them.   
  
Antonio and his hollow heart took their leave after the tinker and the salesman went inside to settle their quarrel. The argument reminded him of something. Yes. It reminded him of Prince **ss** Lovino, all alone and trapped in her castle. She was cursed, wasn’t she? And now Antonio was too, and he hadn’t even angered a magician like she had. Maybe he should go back and visit to see if the prince **ss** knew anything that could help him. It sounded like the best idea so far.   
  
His heart might not have been completely back to normal, but its beat did quicken at the thought on his way back home.   
Three days later, Antonio stood in front of the gates and marveled at how neglected the castle looked again after just a few months. He felt a little guilty, because making the place bright and new again had been his responsibility for over half a year. But that didn’t matter, because he was back, for a little while at least. He could make a little time to take care of the gardens again.   
  
Out of nostalgia, the first place he went after he entered the castle was the little study where he had first met the prince **ss**. She wasn’t there.   
  
She wasn’t in the dining room either.   
  
She wasn’t in the kitchen.   
  
The treasure rooms were empty.   
  
As were the gardens.   
  
Antonio’s hollow heart sank, and he began to run, inside the castle. He threw open doors and glanced into rooms, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t find the prince **ss**. It was terrifying. Finally, Antonio came to the library door, his last resort, and yanked it open.   
  
Prince **ss** Lovino was inside.   
  
So was a strange man. He was pale, and small, and looked terrified out of his wits because the prince **ss** had him in a stranglehold and was about to kiss him, straight on the lips. She faltered when she noticed Antonio standing at the entrance. That was enough for the small man to slip away from her, run across the room, and disappear forever ( _after whispering a heartfelt “Thank you” to Antonio on his way out_ ).   
  
Antonio and his hollow heart were aghast. “L-lovino! What was that?”   
  
She blushed, from head to toe. He could tell because she was wearing a low-cut dress that wasn’t quite long enough for her odd height. It was one of her mother’s… he had cleaned and mended it himself.   
  
It was beautiful on her.   
  
He had no idea why she would be wearing it.   
  
“You! What are you doing back here?” She stomped over towards him, except her footfalls were light. She was wearing her mother’s jeweled slippers, too. He had given them new soles.   
  
Important things first. “Who was that?”   
  
“A woodcutter who got lost.” She folded her arms against her chest, a gesture Antonio had come to learn stood for extreme impatience ( _a gesture he hadn’t minded seeing so often_ ). “I told you to never come back.”   
  
True. But, “I’m bad at doing what you tell me.”   
  
Were those tears in her eyes? Her eyes… she was wearing makeup! Her mother’s makeup that he had found and assembled in a nice little box and set outside her door on the ground floor as a hint! “Fucker.”   
  
Antonio’s hollow heart rang and he hadn’t even hit it with anything. It was embarrassing, actually, now that he thought about it. Lovi—no, the prince **ss** was confined and alone ( _not as alone as he’d thought, apparently_ ) because of her curse. That was worse.   
  
“What the fuck was that?” Lovino, while unhappy to see Antonio’s stupid, jerkish, oblivious, aesthetically pleasing, usually quite clean for a farm boy, all-around quite nice face again, stepped even closer and poked him right where his heart was supposed to be.   
  
_PING_   
  
“…shit.”   
  
“Yeah,” Antonio breathed ( _she was wearing perfume!_ ). “It does that now.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
He took her hand away, because for some reason he was uncomfortable with her being so close. He must have been allergic to the perfume. That must have been it. “I’m cursed. The not-tinker said so.”   
  
The idiot was being even more confusing than usual. “What does that have to do with me? I _told_ you to go away!” Lovino shook in his dress and tried to hold back his tears. They were tears of indignation, goddammit. Because Antonio had stayed the longest out of anyone, in over a hundred years now, and he had left. Leaving meant leaving forever, to Lovino. Antonio couldn’t just waltz back in and think that he could be Lovino’s happy little underling again. It didn’t work that way.   
  
Lovino wanted him to stay forever too badly to allow him to visit for a day.   
  
“But you’re cursed too! I thought we could be cursed together… or something… until I figure it out.” Antonio cringed, because that sounded rather rude. If what Lovi was always claiming was true, then he was fully capable of releasing her of her curse at any time. He just hadn’t.   
  
“ _I_ was cursed because some fucking rude, _trashed_ magician thought I was too ‘mouthy’ for my own good, and decided to magic me into the ‘ungrateful bar wench’ I always ‘deserved to be’.” Lovino’s breaths were coming in great, angry heaves. “ _What happened to **you**_?”   
  
“I went to bed one night and it was like that.” Well. When he said it out loud it sort of sounded… silly… “But that doesn’t make it any less scary! And you never told me what you were doing in here with that… that _woodcutter_.” Antonio didn’t know why he cared, didn’t know why a bolt of lightning crackled across a sky that had previously been bright, lending the room extra illumination.   
  
Lovino snorted and went to pick up one of his manuals from a side table. He skimmed over a passage and paraphrased it for the idiot ( _who was acting even stranger than usual_ ). “I was ‘tantalisinge mye mann with mye grase and charrme on the dansefloor’.” Finished, he looked up at Antonio and _dared_ him to comment.   
  
Antonio dared. “You never danced with me.” …he hadn’t intended to say that. What was going on? Why did his heart feel funny ( _besides the obvious_ )?   
  
The prince **ss** scrunched up her face, picked up the ends of her dress, and marched over to where Antonio stood. When she reached him, she bodily dragged him with more force than he ever thought she possessed over to the center of the room. “You wanna fucking dance? Then we’ll fucking _dance_.”   
  
Lovino was going insane. He had to be. A hundred years more or less alone and reading Feliciano’s novels full of bodice ripping ( _and the occasional stable boy and master scenario that Lovino had been uncomfortable to find but had read anyway_ ) had made Lovino crazy, because here he was. In a dress. In a library. Dancing with Antonio.   
  
At least he could still lead. Or that was what he thought, until Antonio stepped forward when _he_ stepped forward, and both ended up on the floor. “Eh? Why’d you do that, Lovi? I’m the guy.”   
  
Lovino bit back a “You’re not the only one” and stopped himself from kneeing Antonio in the balls because all of a sudden he was embarrassed that he was anywhere close enough to touch them ( _Shit. **Damn** these woman hormones_ ). “I’m royalty. Royalty always leads. It’s the law.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
Well, that sounded reasonable. “Sorry then. I guess I got a little confused.”   
  
Lovino really wanted to tell Antonio that he was born confused, but after a few seconds something more important came up. Namely, “Why haven’t you kissed me yet!?”   
  
Antonio blushed, because he had been thinking about dance steps and Lovi’s outburst had caught him off guard. “What?”   
  
Lovi—no, the prince **ss** , no. _Lovi_ hit her fist against his heart. The sound was dull and thick, but that escaped the notice of the two on the floor. “How much more of a moment could you want, peasant? Here I am, lying on top of you, I swear to God I’ve been giving you a view for the past five minutes, and all you can do is lie back and stare at the ceiling? What kind of a man are you?!”   
  
And she brought his attention back to the low cut of her dress _just_ as he’d forgotten about it. “It isn’t nice to stare, my mother taught me that.”   
  
Lovino snorted. “Che. Hasn’t stopped you before.” If the freak had liked breasts so much, and if Lovino had been a shameless hussy, he would have offered a grope in exchange for a kiss much earlier on.   
  
Antonio carefully shifted his view back to Lovino’s angry eyes. “Maybe. But it feels weird.”   
  
Weird? “Weird!?”   
  
“I don’t know,” Antonio would have waved his hands in front of himself in a placating gesture if Lovino wasn’t lying on top of them. “My heart feels funny again.”   
  
Lovino, swept up in the ( _not very romantic_ ) moment, narrowed his eyes. “I’ll make your fucking heart feel funny.” He took both of his hands, grabbed either side of Antonio’s face, and before Antonio could get away, slammed their mouths together.   
  
_‘I thought I had to kiss **you’**_ was the last coherent thought Antonio had, right after ‘ _her breasts are touching my chest_ ’ and ‘ _is that a rainbow out the window?_ ’ He couldn’t fold his arms around Lovi, his prince **ss** , because she was kind of heavy and still on top of them. But he would have if he could.   
  
If he could have, he would have also taken command of the kiss. But Lovino was of the firm opinion that royalty led, so… Antonio let himself be swept away.   
  
It was the smell of burnt toast that broke him out of the light haze of Lovi’s lips and hands and body against his. And then the lights followed. Soft, multicolored lights enveloped Lovino, much like a fog, until Antonio couldn’t see her at all even though he was lying beneath her.   
  
When the smell and the lights were gone, something was different.   
  
It was Lovi. Lovi was different.   
  
Lovi was the cutest man Antonio had ever seen, wearing a dress that didn’t fit him quite right. Now sitting on top of Antonio’s chest. A man. “You weren’t lying.”   
  
Her— _his_ voice was deeper now, although it was as annoyed as ever. “Fuck, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, what? What are you staring at?!” Antonio couldn’t decide what to stare at first, so he let his gaze wander over every inch of Lovi that was different. “Y-you peasant! Hey! Antonio!”   
  
“You know,” Antonio coughed a little, to the side. “Cute girls are nice… but I like cute boys _waaay_ better.”   
  
Prince Lovino ( _no one would ever challenge that again, except for maybe all those anti-monarchy peasants_ ) stared in shock, and felt himself get ten degrees hotter as his entire body blushed. F-fuck, Antonio was like _that_ ( _not that Lovino was complaining…_ )? “What about all the staring?”   
  
“Staring?”   
  
Lovino pointed at his now flat chest, still clad in his mother’s dress. “You stared at my breasts! All the time!”   
  
…he’d been caught. Shit. It was time to backtrack, and quickly. “They were nice?”   
  
“Then how the fuck can you say that you like boys better!” Lovino couldn’t believe he was saying it. He also couldn’t believe he was still wearing a dress ( _luckily the lights had dissolved his mother’s face paint. He could feel the weight of it gone_ ). Well, he wouldn’t be. Not for long.   
  
Antonio idly watched his prince—his _prince,_ stand and begin shedding his ornate dress. “I can have multiple interests.”   
  
Lovino scoffed once he was free of the frills and the petticoat and fuck, how did he know the name of that? “Like being a pervert _and_ an idiot?”   
  
Personally, Antonio didn’t think it was perverted to stare at another man’s naked body if he was just _standing there_ , with his hands on his hips, letting it happen. “Uh.” But undoubtedly Lovino would think differently. “You’re not much different, now.”   
  
“What did you say?” Lovino was a man again. He was proud of that accomplishment. “Yes I am!”   
  
“Not really.” Antonio’s gaze lingered on Lovino’s lower half. Mmmm… there was _that_ difference. “You’ve called me an idiot and a pervert both loads of times before.” He looked up. “And even though the bone structure’s a little bit different now, your face is still really grumpy looking.”   
  
Strangely, Lovino still felt weird about kneeing Antonio in the balls ( _or stepping on them, because he was in an easier position for that_ ). Instead, he chose a verbal argument. “I’m different: I can take a piss while standing up again.” He’d missed that. A lot.   
  
Antonio had to admit that was a nice side-effect of having a penis. He looked back down to check and yes, Lovino still had one. Had one again. Had a nice one ( _‘Maybe I_ am _a pervert…’_ ). “Now what?”   
  
Lovino blinked at the sudden burst of sun through the library window. “Now I’m a man. I’m not cursed anymore.”   
  
“But… what will you do?”   
  
Fuck. Lovino hadn’t thought that far. For a hundred years his priority had been getting his manhood back. His secondary priority had been finding that magician and stuffing a broom down his throat. The latter had never happened, and would probably never happen. The former, though, had. “I’ll be the prince of this land again.”   
  
“But we don’t have a monarchy system anymore.”   
  
Shit.   
  
Antonio sat up. “You could always come back to my farm. With me. There’s lots of room. And tomatoes. And me.”   
  
When Lovino set foot outside his castle gates for the first time in over a hundred years, he sighed in relief and didn’t look back. Antonio looked back, because Antonio was a sentimental idiot. Lovino had had enough of that castle and everything it stood for. “Here.” He handed the giant bag in his arms to Antonio’s already over-burdened arms. “Carry my pack. I don’t want to.”   
  
“Loviiii,” Antonio’s smile didn’t match his whine, but somehow he didn’t care that Lovino’s personality hadn’t changed at all ( _why would it?_ ), and that he was still lazy and messy and demanding and hard to talk to sometimes.   
  
Because, when it came down to it, that was who Lovino was.   
  
And Antonio, a farm boy with strange talents and stranger predilections and a three hour hike over ground that was still muddy because of the freak thunderstorm with the most adorably cranky person he had ever met, loved him.   
  
Come rain and shine.   
  
  


* * *

  
  
ELSEWHERE…   
  
In the little provincial village, within storming-the-castle distance ( _give or take_ ), the townsfolk gather in the local tavern. They join their voices in song:   
  
_“Thick necks originated in Korea!”_

**Author's Note:**

> I think I got the idea for this on a plane. Of course you needed to know that. Anyway, the beginning of this story really makes me want to do a Hetalia-Harvest Moon fusion… just need to figure out the logistics; crap I think I’ve just committed myself to another multiparter. But it would be so awesome! C’mon, what isn’t epic about farming and getting people to love you by giving them stuff you picked up off the ground (I have this feeling that many of the hetalia characters would be big fans of the colored 'grass')?
> 
> Add some Spamano to that and it would be such a Wonderful Life (Bad wordplay. Bad)! But that’s neither here nor there. What's more relevant to here is that I like this universe. I think I might do a little something later for Alfred and Ivan's story. How did Ivan's speech jive with you guys? I've never written him before, and while I didn't want to stick with 'da vodka da become one with me', I did kind of mangle his speech pattern. Did it feel like Ivan?
> 
> Also: Princess Lovino vs. Lovino. The former is out of Antonio’s POV. He adds the little emphasis on at the end, because he doesn’t believe Lovi when he says he’s really a he. But naturally, Lovino’s POV (the latter), has only Prince and male pronouns. Just in case of confusion.
> 
> Double Also: Antonio hollow-hearted himself, with the magic he never knew about. He also un-hollow-hearted himself (that or love, take your pick). It doesn’t come up in the ending because I think the characters have other pressing things to think about. I bet it’d come up on that several-hour walk home though.
> 
> Triple Also: Shit. This was only supposed to be like 10 pages. Is 21. Is 10,490 words. Huh.
> 
> Quadruple Also: does the ending feel weak?
> 
> Pentuple Also: MY RAGE AT POSTING RESTRICTIONS IS GREAT. This was supposed to be a oneshot. Lj told me it was too long. Blast.


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